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I have a formatting question. I don’t know if it qualifies for this thread, since it’s basically a question about aesthetics in an SSLP, but since it’s about structuring posts I didn’t think it would fit in the Sandcastle either. I couldn’t decide which to post in, so I flipped a coin and you guys won. My current LP makes copious use of scene breaks, and until recently I just used ellipses between sections. Here’s an illustrative example taken from my last update: quote:
Yeah, I know this is really long, but I the whole point of this exercise is figuring out what looks best when people scroll through blocks of text. I decided that kind of sucked given how invisible those breaks could be. The thread recommended I use a bunch of dashes like so: quote:
While that looks great on mobile, it’s still hard to see on desktop and it’s definitely awkward to type. So I came up with a compromise position, by which I mean I came up with something completely different: quote:
I used an image of a black bar. It resizes itself to fit the screen and its positioning makes it pop, but it’s kind of lopsided and might be a bridge too far. Am I on the right track or is there anything I’m missing?
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Apr 5, 2021 21:20
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Oh – before you go…
…
Yuna, the high summoner’s daughter. Seymour, the leader of the Guado. Married in the name of Yevon, overcoming the barriers of race once again. It would give Spira something good to talk about, for a change.
Sounds like a waste of time, like Auron says.
Yeah, I mean, marriage? We gotta defeat Sin. Marriage can wait!
… Maybe it can’t.
You could always just quit your pilgrimage and get married...
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 05:31 |
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I didn't see any holistic screenshot LP guides in the OP and it decided to adapt an old post of mine laying out my workflow into a generalized first-timer's guide, because that sounds like a quick and easy job that won't cause me any stress or frustration. I'm 6K words in and it's a loving mess, so I decided to pull back and try and build a table of contents covering the highlights so I know what to tackle and in what order. As it stands, I'm looking at two sections with a bunch of subheadings: PREPARATIONS
Are there any big concepts (or smaller subheadings) I'm missing? I know I'm not quite there, I just haven't figured out what holes I need to plug. I'm assuming whoever reads it has already committed to doing a screenshot LP and selected a game, so I'm trying to keep the scope limited to going from a concept to a running LP. It also won't be definitive; I'm kind of a caveman terrified of foreign concepts like crap and basic programming, so I'm laying it out as a description of how to do the all this manually with extensive notes on where to find programs that can do things for you (plus some VBA presented as painlessly as possible). This isn't supposed to be a full strategy guide as much as a reference document that lays out the basics and gives you the vocabulary you need to ask the Fort for help with specifics
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Dec 31, 2021 05:13
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I’m in need of help. I’m about to LP Final Fantasy Dimensions II, an iOS game, and I desperately need access to a script dump. I’m planning on rewriting half the dialogue anyway so it isn’t horribly pressing, but I could really use access to the text to keep track of its rather winding plot, and the game is so obscure nobody’s posted a transcript or script dump I could find. Is there a way someone who’s reasonably tech-illiterate like me can get it out of the game or is that just not an option?
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Sep 29, 2022 15:53
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I just finished a ~17,000 word guide on screenshot LPs that I've been working on for... God, for years now. It covers thread management, burnout prevention, OP construction, image creation and hosting, update structuring and editing, pratical BBCode, three different ways to go from blank word doc to posted update in increasing levels of complexity complete with copypastable VBA scripts, and a bunch of other poo poo I've forgotten about. I threw up a draft on the test poster for lack of other places to put it, since it uses SA BBCode (it evolved out of an addendum to one of my LPs) and there's no way in hell I could post it here without drowning out the thread. Are there steps I should be taking to get eyes on it and/or get it considered for inclusion in the OP?Admiral H. Curtiss posted:The error you made is using Rightload in 2023, that program hasn't been updated in over a decade. Use ShareX instead. ShareX is basically magical.
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Jan 30, 2024 22:14
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Carbon dioxide posted:drat, that's an impressive amount of work, well done. As far as chapter size, remember this guide is written for the kind of person with a lot of enthusiasm and nothing else, so they may not have a good reference point for what a chapter looks like - especially since what chapter is varies between games. It may be that i should add something about that, though, maybe advising using other LPs for reference on that point. I can't say anything about image number as an update size standard, that's foreign to how my Creative Writing bachelor's mind works. If you have a solid heuristic for how to calculate that, I'd happily throw it in. Also, I just type the BBCode directly into word and use the preview function before posting the update to test if the formatting all worked right. That way I can limit how many programs I work through, a big bonus for a technophobe like me. However, at no point in the guide do I make it clear that's what I'm doing, so that definitely needs to change. Also, like I say in the thing itself, there are so many better ways to make this thing work, I just use a way that minimizes the technical knowledge needed for my own comfort. I know through long experience I don't have any real programming aptitude. There's no reason (except if its already in the OP I guess) for me not to work others' knowledge in, I just couldn't hope to do it on my own. Also, I thought I had a section on manual ctrl+H use for tagging, did that not make it in? E: there are also several sites that convert rich text to BBCode and back again, which really helps with the conversion issue, but that I'd have to lay out and put in links to. And I know quite well this poo poo really only works for Windows. I didn't feel comfortable speculating on other platforms because I have no experience there and not enough time or money to experiment myself. That's a significant issue hopefully I can tackle someday. PurpleXVI posted:I would say that some things feel a bit... excessively detailed? That's fair, but when I first tried to learn operating ShareX based on that level of instruction, I failed. I didn't know how to navigate any of the menus ("what do I click to record?" "I'm not seeing anything after that, is it recording?" "I know I need to screenshot important things, but every time I go to construct the update I end up going back for a dozen new shots and it's discouraging." "There's no option to upload to LPix and I don't know what a json is." "Why do all the tutorials I find cover things I don't need and make me download tools from websites I've never heard of?") and I gave up, until Explopyro broke it down for me. There's a reason I apologized in the intro if it came across as condescending, it's written for people who need to be condescended to in order to learn. Personally, I feel beginner tech guides have the same issue as beginner cookbooks: their authors know their poo poo and have immense practical experience, but they usually came into their field with a great deal of interest and aptitude, and they enjoy it enough they feel spending lots of time and effort advancing your skills is inherently rewarding. If that's true for a given learner, it works great! But people with no aptitude, who don't find it fun (or are frightened by it), and don't have the time and money to sink into skill building approach things from a perspective a lot of specialists don't understand. The experts tend to assume everyone is a chef/programmer at heart and the most you have to do is get them up to speed. Meanwhile, the people reading their guides look at walls of sample code or emphasis on fresh spices they can't buy at lovely local grocery stores and they give up. My experience with cookbooks specifically is why I tend to provide numbers instead of impressions when I can, even if I tell people to ignore them at will. I deliberately tried to make an end-run around that particular issue here. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jan 31, 2024 |
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Jan 31, 2024 17:24
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If all else fails, quote an update with successfully embedded screenshots, copy the code somewhere else, and compare it to what you’re doing. You can also take the backend of a failed post and put it here so we can see.PurpleXVI posted:Also a fair argument. Perhaps a compromise might be having the concise version, and then below it, a detailed version. That probably needs to be there, I’m just very bad with figuring out the level of abstraction needed; every time I think about how to structure a section like that, I either swing into too much detail and wonder why bother repeating myself or too little detail and wonder why someone who needs that little guidance won’t figure it out themselves. Some of those lists could definitely be pared down somehow, at least. E: can I at least quote your summary for that part to start with? Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Feb 1, 2024 |
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Feb 1, 2024 16:39
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 05:31 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Sure! One thing that's also definitely worth telling people about with ShareX is that you can copy image links from ShareX, because lmao for like FIVE SSLP's I didn't know that and was painstakingly copypasting every single link from the lpix gallery. I hated myself so much when I figured out how much effort I had wasted. That's in there under Screenshots (Preparation) already, but your summary is added in and I'll put some thought into whether it's worth bringing forward to make it more clear. New version up. It includes most of the feedback I got, plus sections that occurred to me as I went through, like Irfanview image conversion and thread title and icon selection. It is also now almost 19,000 words. I can't stop. Help 
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Feb 1, 2024 19:29
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